SCANDAL AT CHRISTMAS
By
Danelle Harmon
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Windward Press
SCANDAL AT CHRISTMAS
(Originally published in 2015 as “To Make A Perfect Scandal,” part of A VERY MATCHMAKER CHRISTMAS by Christi Caldwell, Danelle Harmon, Valerie Bowman, and Renee Bernard
Copyright © 2015, 2017 by Danelle Harmon
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Prologue
Winter, 1813
London
Agatha Pemberly, the Countess of Weston, sighed.
Had it been any other debutante, dowager, or respected matron, well then, that soft exhalation of air might have been perceived as rather insignificant.
Except Agatha gathered after a more than twenty-year friendship with Lady Clare Carlisle, Lady Pamela Portland, and Lady Lenore Penmore, her dear friends should by now know the following:
One sigh signified news of importance.
Two sighs indicated a matter of concern.
And three sighs, well, three sighs bordered on call-the-constable-there-is-trouble-indeed. Agatha, the leader of their little group since they’d met at Mrs. Thistelwait’s Finishing School twenty-four years ago, now passed her gaze over the trio she’d assembled. She studied them as they chatted. With their unfettered laughs and wildly gesticulating hands, they may as well have been just ladies meeting for tea. She furrowed her brow. Except they were something far more than that.
They were four mamas meeting for tea.
She gave her head a deploring shake. These were sad days indeed if her friends, all parents to a collection of unwed daughters, could be so…so…immune to the great peril their offspring faced.
With a frown, Agatha sighed.
Again.
She tipped the porcelain teapot over and filled three empty cups to the brim with the steaming brew. And waited.
Clare picked up her cup of tea and blew on the contents. The stiffly proper mama made to take a small sip, then froze. “Oh, dear.” She blinked several times. “Was that three sighs?”
“Four,” Agatha corrected. Humph. They’d not been attending as they should. “There were four.” She winged a brow up. “Four sighs.”
With her cup halfway to her lips, Lenore stilled. “Oh, my.” The delicate porcelain cup in her fingers trembled slightly and she quickly set it down.
Having at last secured the other matrons’ attention, Agatha took one more sip of her tea and put the half-empty contents down beside Lenore’s now forgotten refreshment. Each woman edged forward in their seats and then looked expectantly at her. Well, at last.
Appreciating that her friends now attended her, Agatha smoothed her palms over her silvery satin skirts and took a deep breath. “It is—” She paused and glanced around the room. She peered across the room at the floor-length windows. With her gaze, she searched for slippered feet. After all, a mother could never be too careful with a precocious, and often troublesome, young daughter underfoot. Content that her search had revealed no hidden minxes, she spoke in a loud whisper, “It is Jane.”
The trio of ladies tipped their heads in a like manner.
Surely they followed the reason for this visit now? Except Pamela wrinkled her brow. She looked back and forth between the other two ladies. The lady’s perplexed expression matched the one she’d worn as a girl of fifteen struggling through her French lessons.
Agatha turned a pointed stare on Clare. They shared a look. Then, the ever proper marchioness patted Pamela’s knee. “The Season. She is speaking of Jane’s dism— er”—the other woman had the good grace to flush—“Season.”
Pamela widened her eyes. “Ahh.” She smiled widely, also with the same pleased grin as when she’d mastered parts of those long ago French lessons. But then her smile dipped. “Oh.”
At last. Agatha moved closer to the edge of her seat. “My Jane had a dismal first Season.” The other women were too polite to agree, but too honest to not issue false protest. “Her second Season.” She shook her head and winced. “Well, her second Season was a good deal worse.”
Her supportive friends nodded commiseratively.
“Nowhere near as dire as my Winnie’s,” Pamela muttered from under her breath. She wrinkled her nose. “I have it on good authority from her brother, Thomas—” She tapped her fingertip against her lip. “Or perhaps it was James, which makes a good deal more sense because Thomas is away at univ—”
A sound of impatience escaped Clare. “Pamela,” she scolded. Through their years of friendship, Lady Carlisle had proven the most coolly logical of the friends. “I believe we are attending Agatha’s concerns.”
My concerns?
Agatha eyed the other woman disapprovingly. How for all her logic and reason could Clare not have the sense the Lord gave a horse to demonstrate a suitable degree of alarm for her own unwed daughter as well? She sighed. Then, Clare had always demonstrated a remarkable faith in her children. Tsk, tsk. Silly woman.
“She has gone all quiet,” Lenore whispered loudly.
Three pairs of eyes snapped to Agatha once more.
She patted her meticulous coif. After all, they’d all learned well by now that silence oft preceded one of her telling and very deliberate sighs. “We were speaking of our daughters.” Agatha took a moment to level them each with a look. “Our unwed daughters.”
“I daresay we do not require the whole unwed business attached to it, Agatha,” Lenore said with a dry note underscoring her words. “We all know precisely the marital state of our daughters.”
Agatha pounced. “Do we, though?” She sent another eyebrow shooting up. “Do we, when we should speak so casually of the cherry tarts made by Cook—”
Their plump friend shifted on her seat. “They were delicious tarts,” Pamela mumbled underneath her breath.
As one, the group gave her yet another look.
“Er, right,” Pamela said with a shake of her head. “Well then, as I was saying, my Winnie,” she dropped her voice to a scandalized whisper, “has set her sights upon a particular gentleman,” A frown turned her lips. “A gentleman whose identity I still haven’t gleaned.” She took a sip of her tea and then set it down hard enough to send liquid droplets spraying over the table. “But I will. I assure you I will find out.”
“I consider myself fortunate to have just my Jane to wed off.” With but one daughter, Agatha would inspire envy in any mama trying to make a match with a daughter who’d never be considered a diamond of the first waters.
“Do you know my Winnie insists she’ll not wed because her heart is otherwise engaged?” As though pained by the very idea of it, a groan escaped the plump Pamela. She plucked a pastry from the tray of treats upon the rose-inlaid table and took a large bite.
The group fell silent. Who could have ever anticipated when they’d been young girls of fifteen in finishing school that such woes awaited them as beleaguered mamas? Only with a mother’s insight did they now know that those distinguished institutions should add the very important course of marrying-ones-daughter-off to the lessons on deportment and embroidery.
Pamela made to reach f
or another confectionary creation when Agatha drummed her fingertips upon the arms of her chair. “Were we ever so…so…hopelessly romantic?”
An inelegant snort escaped Lenore. “Indeed, we were not. We were practical…”
“Logical,” Clare supplied. She gave a wry smile.
“And determined to make a good match,” Agatha added that last, very important point. Which brought her neatly back to the very reason she’d summoned her dear friends over on this ungodly chilly, snowy, winter day. Pamela leaned over and picked up another tart from the quickly dwindling tray.
Agatha drew in a deep breath finding the strength to utter words that had no place being spoken aloud. But then, theirs was a very special friendship, only strengthened over time. There were no secrets among them. “I fear if I…er, that is we, do not intervene then my Jane will be in a very dire situation. Very dire,” she said with just enough dramatic flourish to call Pamela’s attention away from the pastries. “Your Winifred is in equal amounts of trouble.”
The woman’s plump fingers fluttered back to her side.
Agatha glanced around the small pairing of friends she’d assembled. “As is your Prudence.” Clare’s eyes formed moons. She continued on to Lenore. “And as is your Leticia.”
“But what can we do?” Lenore tossed her hands up. “I cannot get my girl to think of anything other than …her horses.”
The other three mamas fell immediately silent, as though fearing one of their lamentable children might be very well lurking outside the closed parlor door.
Agatha cleared her throat and took care to speak in low, hushed tones. “Why, there is only one thing we can do. As concerned mothers, that is.”
Her three friends looked back at her and then Agatha gave a slow, conspiratorial smile.
Lenore’s brow went up in a dawning realization. She scrambled forward to the edge of the pale pink upholstered sofa. “Dare we?” she asked breathless. “They’ll never forgive us if they discover what we’ve done.”
Agatha scoffed. “I imagine it far more likely they’ll never forgive us if they grow into lonely, unwed spinsters.”
“What are we doing?” Pamela stomped her slippered foot, a rather awkward feat considering her position perched at the edge of her seat.
Clare took heart. “Do pay attention. They are interfering, my dear.” She pointed her eyes to the ceiling.
Agatha pursed her lips. Did Clare believe herself above matchmaking? Oh, poor, poor Clare. Ever the voice of reason, and in this case, deplorable reason, she turned her lips up in one of those I-know-so-much-more-than-you smiles. “I do believe some of us,” she gave Agatha a look, “are given to histrionics.”
Not rising to the other woman’s bait, Agatha picked up her teacup and took a sip.
“I’ve little worries where my Prudence is concerned,” Clare said with a flounce of her hair. “She is practical and reasonable and logical.” Like me. The marchioness leaned forward and poured herself another cup of tea.
Lenore and Agatha exchanged another look from over her head. Poor, hopelessly blind Clare. Well, it was their duty to help her and her daughter, whether the other ladies themselves failed to see as much.
“Whatever shall we do?” Pamela moaned, bringing them back to the crucial matter that brought them here this day. Even the flighty one of their group saw the peril.
Agatha waited a moment until each pair of eyes was fixed solely on her. Then, with a very precise movement, she turned her lips up in a slow, mischievous smile. “We will be playing matchmakers this Christmas.”
Silence met her pronouncement.
Pamela wrung her hands together. “Oh, but will they ever agree to any match we dare suggest?” And much the way she’d done as a nervous debutante, she reached for yet another pastry and began to nibble away at Cook’s latest creation.
Agatha moved her finger in a deliberate circle. “Ahh, but we wouldn’t dare do anything as direct as to suggest the gentlemen best suited for our wayward girls.”
A smile to rival the cat who’d found Cooks’ cream split Lenore’s cheeks. “Why, I daresay if we even discourage their attention, we might be best served.”
At that, Pamela paused mid-bite. She reached for a napkin and dabbed at her lips. “Whyever would we discourage them from…” Then her eyes lit. “I see.”
At last. As had been Pamela’s way through the years, inevitably she caught on.
Their dear, if obstinate, daughters would never do something as agreeable as making the match their mothers knew to be for the best. If, however, they gave them necessary guidance through some very deliberate misguidance, well then, Agatha rather suspected every single one of their incorrigible, four eldest, unwed daughters would find themselves wed—by the Christmas holiday if Agatha, Pamela, Lenore, and Clare had their way.
And invariably, the four resolute mamas always had their way.
Always.
Chapter 1
December 1813
Norfolk, England
She was good at eavesdropping.
To the servants who were dusting the paintings that hung in the portrait gallery of this grand house that she and her mother were visiting, the Honourable Miss Letitia Ponsonby, only daughter of Lord and Lady Penmore, was a study in perfection. Perfect posture as she sat in a chair reading just outside a drawing room door. Perfect hair, a lustrous blend of amber and gold, parted, pinned and encircled in a teal velvet band from which tiny curls escaped to frame her heart-shaped face. Perfect silence as she engrossed herself in the small book open in her lap.
Silence was, of course, necessary for perfect eavesdropping.
She sat primly at the edge of her chair, her pelisse of pale blue-green velvet arranged carefully around her. Her slippers, white lace over a color that mirrored the sea on which her father had made his fame and fortune, peeped out from beneath the hem of her muslin gown, each toe set against the line that separated one marble tile from another. A true lady was the beautiful Letitia but only her mother, quietly conversing behind that closed door with their host, Lady Ariadne, knew that appearances were deceiving...and how acute her daughter’s hearing actually was.
Letitia could hear the words as clearly as if she had pressed her ear to the ancient wood panel.
“It is good to see you again after so long, Ariadne. I hope you know how grateful my Lettie and I are for the invitation to stay here with you on our way down to Leeds, especially with the roads being as they are this time of year. Frankly, I’d have never left Lincolnshire to make such a long trip, but when Lady Weston summons one to her home, one must go. The situation has become critical, I’m afraid.”
“Situation?”
“Our daughters. And especially my daughter, Letitia. Wild as the wind she is, and still unmarried. Seth and I despair of her ever making a match. What man would wed a young lady who walks the fence line between respectability and scandal? My Lettie cares for nothing but horses and the freedom to do as she pleases, and it’s probably my fault, as I have never taken a firm hand with her. The mold has been cast, and it is too late to change it.”
Letitia sat very still, willing even her heartbeat to pause for a moment. She hid a smile. This was getting interesting.
“My friends are all in the same boat, and if we pull any more hair out over the unmarried state of our daughters, we’ll all be as bald as a newly-laid egg. It’s why Lady Weston summoned us down to Kent and why we’re making this trip. She, the Countess of Portland, and the Marchioness of Carlisle are all despairing over this ... this situation every bit as much as I am. It’s gone from being embarrassing to downright alarming, I tell you. Four of the loveliest girls in England from four of the oldest and most prestigious families and they are still quite happily unmarried.”
“So what will you do?”
“Do? What can I do?” Letitia heard the plaintive wail in her mother’s voice and could just picture her wringing her hands. “The only thing I can do. Desperate times call for desperate measure
s, and I am beyond desperate. I have sent word to the Honourable Mr. Homer Trout, inviting him to this same Christmastide house party that we’re attending. The Captain and I have already made it quite clear that we would encourage his pursuit of our daughter’s hand.”
In her chair, Letitia actually did feel her heartbeat stop.
Homer Trout?
Encourage the pursuit of our daughter’s hand?
Her head jerked up and she stared blankly at the opposite wall, her throat tightening, the blood draining from her face. Shock rendered her temporarily unable to think beyond a single silent, plaintive cry: Mama! Mama, how could you do this to me?
“It is my opinion,” her mother was saying, “that the Honourable Mr. Trout will suit my Lettie well. He is mannerly, staid, solid as a rock and quite capable, I suspect, of reining in a girl of her wild and ungovernable nature. In short, quite suitable even if he is not, shall I say, a man to exactly turn a young lady’s head.”
Homer Trout? The blood rushed back to Letitia’s face. Panic rose within her as her mother continued blithely on:
“In any case, the deed is done and Homer will be ready and waiting at this house party and this problem will finally be solved,” she said with chipper finality. “But enough of me. How are things with you? I understand Colin recently had a paper on colic accepted by the Royal Veterinary College. Such an intelligent man you married, Ariadne. And how are the horses? The farm? Rumor has it you’re in need of a head groom.”
“Oh, not me, but my brother Tristan. His ran off after Amir bit him one too many times, nearly taking a finger. The man had had enough. It’s a shame, really. Amir is a gorgeous colt, so much like his sire and his full brother but oh, he’s got teeth and he knows how to use them.”
“Is this one of the Norfolk Thoroughbreds that your father, the late earl, spent forty years developing?”
“Yes, and this colt is particularly stunning...I would have kept him here with us, but now that he’s got his life in order following all that nasty business from a few years back, Tristan wanted to raise him up at the family pile just west of here in Burnham Thorpe. It would be nice, though, if he could find someone willing to work with the little devil. You don’t know of anyone, do you?”
Scandal At Christmas_A Christmas Novella Page 1